


The Blind Man's Bluff

by Reginald_Magpie



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: 1980s, A Lot Less Sex Than The Tags Imply, Addiction, Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe, Breathplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Colorblindness, Consensually Having Your Life Fucked Over, Drug Dealing, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Impulse Control, Loss of Identity, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Masochism, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Non-Woobie Jeremy, Past Child Abuse, Past Incest, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Pizza, Poverty, Protective Siblings, Retelling, Semi-Forbidden Relationships, Trauma-Related Hypersexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 12:36:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8328181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reginald_Magpie/pseuds/Reginald_Magpie
Summary: (We've had enough of this blind man's bluffYou've kept us in the dark for long enough)
Jeremy Fitzgerald is down on his luck, to say the least. Riding the coattails of his brother's cocaine dealing business and sleeping with his brother's business partner/friend has him at wits end and honestly this tiny town he was raised in is just getting a little too quiet. Maybe he's not paying enough attention to the newspapers or what exactly his town is known for these days, but the place seems boring.
So he does what any good criminal does when they get bored; he looks into legitimate work. And in it, he finds a place which is the singular linchpin of his small town's infamy. This is just his side of that place's story.





	

**01.**

It isn’t common for Jeremy to feel vulnerable. Scared? Oh, it’s less common for him to not be scared. But scared is a different thing from vulnerable. See, the thing is, Jeremy likes being scared. He likes haunted houses, he likes adrenaline. But he doesn’t like this, this somewhat newfound feeling of vulnerability. 

It’s been a long time since he felt vulnerable. The last time he can remember, he was eight or nine. He hasn’t felt this feeling of being a fish out of water, this bottoming of his stomach out on the gravel in the shallows, since then at least. The weird tingling at the edges of his skin feels like a thousand volts straight from his heart, every beat is a thousand needles against his skin.

His pulse picks up as he watches the blurry shape pick itself up from the tangle of sheets. Jeremy tries to ignore the empty ache somewhere just south of his hips and pushes down the waves of revolt threatening to hook the fluid in his stomach and drag it up his throat.

“You don’t exactly look like you’re glowing,” Smith says, something vaguely like a smirk playing on his lips. Jeremy’s stomach turns at the shape’s sudden sentience and ability for speech. It’s too much. After what Smith said just before he rolled off of the slight, bent shape against the sheets that used to be Jeremy, Jeremy doesn’t want to think about Smith even vaguely having a voice.

He doesn’t feel like he’s glowing, either. He just feels exposed. This is why he doesn’t do this. At least with people who know anything about him, or more importantly, his family.

Jeremy hadn’t thought coming to Smith’s house would end up like this, even if he thought he might be there to roll around sweaty and unfocused in bed for fifteen minutes, he didn’t expect this kind of disgust and… sensitivity gnawing at his insides.

“It’s been a while,” Jeremy mutters, his hand works its way from the bedspread to his throat, gently rubbing circles where Smith’s hand had been. He can feel the bruising. They both know he’s brushing off a statement made out of concern. They both know Jeremy has no obligation to sharing these few seconds of vulnerability with Smith. They both already know they’re fading and Jeremy, in true fashion, has chosen to conceal. The feeling came too close.

Smith is turning to recover his belt from the floor where Jeremy flung it maybe thirty minutes ago, Jeremy is staring at the ceiling of this unfamiliar bedroom trying to ignore the other occupant while the over-sensitive crawling stops plaguing his skin. He doesn’t like feeling like he can’t move. Smith, despite Jeremy’s best efforts, is going to keep talking, and will not be ignored.

“Your brother got that money?” he asks, the slightest edge of concern is draining from his voice. Jeremy feels something stronger than the wobbling center of gravity this whole fiasco has given him. He can still here Smith’s voice working over the syllables of his brother’s name, his mother’s name, he feels like puking. He should have never told. ‘Your brother’ sounds disgusting out of Smith’s lips.

When Jeremy doesn’t answer, he can hear the smirk in Smith’s voice as he rummages on the tiny desk shoved into the corner of the room and says, “You know, I could always take you. Think you’re worth enough to your brother to pay his debts?”

Jeremy finally looks directly at the other, pale green eyes filling with a loathing so sharp it begins to break down the wall of vulnerability. His senses are returning now. Smith stops smiling and crosses the room, Jeremy vaguely wonders what color the t-shirt he just tossed on really is.

“What? Don’t like the idea?”

Jeremy flinches as the belt is slid around his throat but doesn’t move to stop it. His spine still feels less than solid. Everything attached to it feels so far away.

Outside the window there’s a dreary bank of clouds rolling in, they won’t bring rain but they’re darkening the room. He sits up, muscles protesting, pushing the arm extended toward him away.

“Yeah, fuck this,” he mutters, loosening the belt, letting it fall from his shoulders. He stands, wobbling, feels a sickening wetness against his thigh and tells himself not to think about it, it doesn’t matter right now. He wants out.

Smith stops him, on his trajectory toward the open packet of cigarettes Smith had been rummaging for before, with one arm outstretched. Jeremy glares and pushes the arm out of his way. 

“I honestly thought you’d be less of a pussy than this,” he says, softly, pointedly. Jeremy scowls. He also thought he’d be less of a pussy than this. He feels nauseous.

“Fuck off, can I have a cigarette? I’m taking one,” Jeremy mutters it all in one breath, pulling one out of the pack. He lights it with a match he pulls out of a book in the clutter. The room suddenly feels a degree closer in as it fills with smoke and silence. Jeremy tries not to feel claustrophobic, because claustrophobic is a good thing and something about this encounter, he knows what, keeps fucking with his head.

He stubs the cigarette in an ashtray by the closed window, gathers his clothes to dress sloppily and takes off across the house, nodding to Smith’s sister on the couch in the family room on his way out the front door.

The sky is too dark for seven in the evening. Jeremy has a shift at four tomorrow morning, he had a shift at three this morning, he should be tired. He should feel something. Mostly he just feels like he should find something to make the numb stop.

* * *

 

**02.**

It’s a tuesday. Monday isn’t the worst day of the week for Jeremy, it’s always a Tuesday. It’s sweltering hot outside, overcast but sticky. 

The news is blaring in the back room of the little convenience store, perched in a radio hung from a high rack full of cigarettes and tobacco and glass bottles. Jeremy is tuning out the gruesome re-play of the same story he’s heard ten times now on this channel alone. He’s stocking his shelves, working from a stack of boxes shoved into the back corner of the store, by the cooler which wheezes and squeals intermittently every few seconds. 

Smith is changing the hot coffee pots, running rinse cycles on half and leaving the others to brew. He’s talking about the same news story and Jeremy isn’t listening. he doesn’t notice when the topic switches. He’s too busy sorting brightly colored packages of candy. He recognizes his brother’s name, though, hearing it from Smith’s mouth makes his stomach turn.

“So is he paying me back or not?” Smith asks and Jeremy’s stomach sinks. He sighs. Puts down an unopened box, doesn’t turn to look at Smith.

“How much does he owe you?”

“About thirty five grand, without interest,” Smith hisses, and Jeremy whistles. He feels a pull of excitement and anxiety in his stomach, an attractive cold weight settling in his gut.

“Didn’t realize either of you were moving so much,” he says. It’s true. He’s moved drugs for his brother before, weed pretty regularly, and rarely LSD, but mostly cocaine because it’s cheap and easy to get, easy to sell, easy to profit on, everyone’s doing it. It can go for six hundred a gram, but that’s street value. Jeremy does the calculations and at the price he’s pretty sure his brother can get, that’s three kilos of coke on advance from a guy neither of them really know. And Jeremy knows they can turn a quarter kilo on a really, really good day. On bad days they’re lucky to sell a quarter of an ounce.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Smith returns, and Jeremy’s turning to face him. He doesn’t have the time to react to the glass splitting across his face or his bones mirroring it, it’s the heat that takes his attention. He can feel it all for the longest few seconds of his life, boiling liquid worked under his left eyelid and into every cut, he can smell it, the bitter coffee and the way his skin reacts, it smells like cooking, earthier than he thought burning would smell. He can’t see out of that eye almost immediately, but it only takes a few moments of reeling into the nearest shelf before Jeremy can tell up from down well enough to stand again, and the adrenaline pumping through him kills the pain for a few seconds but the blood is sticky down his chin and throat. It all feels more like tingling and dizziness than pain. His fists fall on Smith’s face without thinking, Jeremy has him on his back on the floor in ninety seconds, and the pot that wasn’t smashed over his face is clenched in one fist.

Jeremy tips the pot slow over Smith’s thighs, emptying it before he brings the bottom of it down hard on his forehead. He doesn’t stop to check his coworker’s breathing before he lets the empty pot roll away.

He grabs his bag and jacket and goes to his brother’s house. Because his brother has more medical shit than he does. Because it feels nice to go to the home his parents used to live in, almost. Because the abandoned lot next to it feels more familiar than anywhere else in the world. Because it’s quiet, and empty, and Jeremy can pass out on the couch for a few hours.

He does. When he comes to his face is sticky, he can feel dry blood cracking against fresh burns and the pain comes rushing in. He can’t sit up. He doesn’t try to. He drifts off again vaguely focusing on the old family photo his brother still has hanging in the hall. It feels like time hasn’t moved since Jeremy was six years old and dragging a teddy bear up and down the street in a little red wagon and his mom called him inside, away from the life he’d been living in peaceful ignorance. The dreams that come with the pain are worse than fever dreams. Not the cathartic nightmares Jeremy enjoys, they employ strange images of things almost-familiar and plants growing through him, not painful, strangely not painful, but tight. Constricting his chest. He wakes up gasping for air more than once.

When his brother finally comes home, he’s frenzied, worried the way he always is about Jeremy when Jeremy drags himself back home with black eyes or broken bones. He’s just whispering “jesus christ” over and over and over again and Jeremy didn’t think his brother could still pick him up, he thought that was something that stopped when he was eight or nine so this must still be part of the dream, this is still him and his stuffed toy friends out in the abandoned lot playing hopscotch, this is still the chlorine drenched summers at the public pool, this is still the nights he could pretend he didn’t hear the screaming, he can’t stand still and he’s squirming and the “jesus christ” breaks for “Jeremy please stop Remy I need you to cooperate” and his name again and again and Jeremy winces and hisses and struggles so he’s standing again but by the time he’s settled in his brother’s car he’s unconscious again.

* * *

**03.**

The memories are holey from there, until a week later, back at his brother’s house, Jeremy finally gets fed up and unwraps the bandages around his left eye and man, okay, his vision used to be bad, He can’t see blue or yellow, and it all muddles into cyan and red and pink, but this is worse. Suddenly the dizziness makes sense. Everything is flat, a picture skewed to one side of his brain. The left has a strange fuzz, a haziness so heavy it’s almost as bad as having one eye closed, or the eyelashes overhanging them so heavily only a fraction of the vision isn’t blurred, and it hurts his head to try to focus on it.

Jeffrey winces when he sees it, and Jeremy just scowls at him, lights a cigarette, asks where his car is. Jeffrey drives him to the lot in the parking center next to the convenience store Jeremy isn’t keen on returning to and then goes home for the night, leaving Jeremy to decide whether or not to go back to his tiny apartment or just sit there in an empty parking lot smoking a dying cigarette, the last of the pack. He lingers for half an hour before he pulls out of the parking lot.

It only takes two blocks to realize how bad the lack of depth perception is going to affect his driving. Jeremy winces as he stops five feet into an intersection through a stop light and sighs. Driving was hard enough not being able to tell the colors of the signs.

He gets drive-through, an even harder feat than stoplights he realizes a little too late to give up on the venture, at a close fast food lookalike, the kind that are still common in this town. He sits in a different empty parking lot to eat his food, reclined in the backseat of his beatup who-knows-what-color four-door. He keeps looking at the ceiling fabric coming loose at the edges and thinking about what comes next, because this is boring, and Jeremy hates boring.

He doesn’t sleep, that seems even more boring, and he doesn’t go home to try to make some semblance of his newfound imbalance. He drives, it’s late enough he doesn’t have to worry too badly. It’s late enough there are only a few places open and he knows which one he’s going to.

The bar that Jeremy’s been frequenting since he moved out of the old family house by the empty lot doesn’t have its name on a sign anywhere outside the building. So he’s never known what to call it besides “the bar across town”. It’s far enough from his brother Jeremy knows they won’t cross paths there. This town is not a thriving one, every few shops are boarded up even in the good places, and this bar isn’t in a good part of town. It’s closer to the broken down amusement park on one end of town, where the parks don’t get maintenance and the people don’t make eye contact on the street once the sun has set.

Jeremy likes this part of town, he found this little corner of it when he was first driving, first doing bigger work with his brother’s business, and he’d wandered down here, spat at the feat of a few older kids who’d bothered him, and been beaten half to death. It was the first time Jeremy had ever come home to his brother that bad, battered and always with that uncanny ability to limp home after a fight before he collapsed. He’d laughed when his brother had seen him, held up his money, and his leftover product, and gone to take a shower before sleeping for days.

Ever since, he’s been smarter about selling here, more discreet and at better times, when even if the people who “own” this side of town will find out he’s there, he’ll be long gone by the time they do. He’s been smarter about being here, too. Jeremy likes fights, he likes the sting and crack, the catharsis is intoxicating, but he knows, mostly, when to avoid them. And when he wants nothing more in the world than a drink, it’s as good a time as any to avoid any unnecessary problems.

The bar is mostly empty, it’s bordering on one AM now, closing time’s in an hour, and it’s a weeknight, it must be. In the entire dusty interior, there are four groups of people, a huddle of drunk college kids in one corner, all standing and talking excitedly (they make up the noise for the entire dusty interior), a lone man at the bar reading a newspaper, a couple tucked into the back booth by the bathrooms, and two women engaged in a game of cards at another table. Jeremy approaches the man at the bar. He’s familiar. A few other nights he’s been here. He doesn’t drink as heavily as Jeremy does, and Jeremy does not drink very heavily here, and he reads a lot. Dark hair and thick glasses, a crooked nose but a genuine smile. He’s alluring, charismatic and seemingly attractive to almost every person he meets. Never once has Jeremy seen him refused anything here.

He doesn’t recognize faces. Jeremy learned that early on. Even the bartender he asks for their name when he sits down, though he seems to be here almost every night. It’s peculiar. Something about him is off but Jeremy can never put a finger on what. Jeremy can never remember his name. He always wears varying shades of reddish-brownish-gray. Tonight it’s the most common garb; a grey-brown security uniform with the vaguest accents in a more russet color, still diluted.

“It’s Jeremy,” he says, as he approaches, sitting down in the seat beside the man in red. Jeremy watches him turn, tilt his head as he takes in Jeremy’s face and squint.

“Hello, Jeremy,” he murmurs, his voice not coming shy but quietly reserved as he tries to figure out what to say, “Did you change your hair?”

“Got my face bashed in with a coffee pot actually.” Jeremy snorts and calls over the bartender, a woman he knows relatively well now, he orders himself and the man in brown a drink.

“How did you manage to do that?” he seems bemused. He accepts the drink, relatively rare for him, something is different tonight. Jeremy can’t put his finger on what.

“Pissed off the right people.” Jeremy grins at him, and the man in red chuckles softly. He has the kind of laugh that makes people turn and see what he’s laughing about. He has the kind of laugh that makes you pay attention, no matter how quiet. It’s honestly incredibly irritating sometimes, but Jeremy can stand it for now, he’s not looking for all eyes to be on him tonight. He wants to lay low. He wants as few people as possible to notice his new face, or at least have as few as possible offer commentary.

“Who played doctor?” the question seems out of the blue a little, but Jeremy just thinks for a long moment, trying to remember his brother’s ex girlfriend’s name, the one who always saw to the shit that got too serious to deal with at home. He draws a blank but can perfectly see her face in his mind. He frowns.

“I can’t remember her name.”

“Do you have a telephone?”

Jeremy shakes his head, pausing to down the last half of his drink.

“Well, call me if you remember, I’d be very interested in knowing,” the man says. He scowls at the clock on the wall and folds his newspaper, handing it to Jeremy, “Take a look through that, there may be some things of interest to you, Jeremy. I hear things about you sometimes. You’ve got a name bigger than you think you do.”

About the most cryptic thing Jeremy’s heard in the last ten years.

“What?” he asks.

“You have a reputation, I’d be interested in seeing more of the real you. I’d like to see if I’m disappointed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The man just shakes his head and turns to leave, waving a quick goodbye to the bartender.

“Call me if you remember that name,” he says, before picking up a messenger bag he’d had tucked under his stool and slipping out the door.

Jeremy orders another three drinks before he can remember the woman’s name.

* * *

**04.**

The newspaper sits untouched on the desk crammed into the very corner of Jeremy’s tiny studio apartment for weeks. He doesn’t call the man in red back and he doesn’t go back to his brother’s house after that night. He comes home, unlocks the door to his empty apartment and sits in bed for nearly two hours trying to convince himself to lay down. He’s never had such a hard time sleeping. He used to turn to the left side, but that doesn’t work anymore, it’s not comfortable anymore. Not that much is.

Jeremy hates the feeling of his sheets suddenly, hates the feeling of the air around him. He begs silently for something to kill him and it doesn’t. He sleeps, eventually, fitfully, dreaming of a long long path and someone walking with him and then not walking with him, he dreams about stopping walking himself but he’s still going, he’s still floating on ahead of his body, and he dreams about people he can’t really remember but who were important in his childhood. He does not rest well.

The next several weeks drip on with the speed of espresso brewing from a too-fine grind, thoughtlessly they brush through the Fitzgerald brothers’ lives, knocking over this or that but not really changing anything. Change comes cloaked by time, unexpected and predatory it creeps so slowly Jeremy doesn’t notice the old year dying and the new replacing it, he doesn’t notice when winter in this little town curls over until it’s made way for spring.

He’s digging through his paperwork, reading letters from Smith sent to him and his brother from somewhere far away, telling them he’ll come back, reading copies of resumes which never got him work, and notes about regular customers. His desk is a disaster, but spring has even an affect on Jeremy when he wants to clean house.

There’s a letter in the pile, just on top of the newspaper that’s addressed to a different Fitzgerald; Mariam Fitsgerald. Jeremy had opened it, because it came to his address, because he’d misread it for Miriam Fitzgerald. It didn’t make much sense before, it still didn’t. Condolences, questions, nothing that made very much sense. Jeremy tosses the letter with most of the rest into the wastepaper basket.

Then there’s the newspaper. It’s frail, now, the edges bent and torn from having other things stacked on top, but backside up, the tiny black and white advertisement in the center of the work advertisements is so set out against the rest of the poorly adjusted text that he can’t help but look at it uncomprehendingly for a long moment before recognizing what it says. He’s driven by the place before. He thinks about it. He inspects the paper. There’s blood on one edge. There’s blood on a lot of things in here, though, it’s not like Jeremy likes coming home without a new bruise or gash to show off to the posters on his walls. He tosses the newspaper into the basket with the rest of the clutter on his desk. He sighs. He goes out to the fire escape for a cigarette.

When he comes back he throws on a coat, goes grocery shopping, and stops by Jeffrey’s house to make dinner. He spends a few hours after just sitting in the empty lot with his brother. Mostly they don’t talk. They go through a pack of cigarettes together. The stars come out behind the city fog.

Jeremy drives past the place from the newspaper on his way home, it’s dark, closed for the night hours ago. It doesn’t look how it does in the daytime, not as friendly or cheery or kid-friendly. He parks in the parking lot, because nothing’s stopping him. Something about the building raises his heart rate. He revels in it, feeling his stomach flip as he approaches. There’s nothing to prevent some person off the street from walking right up to the door. Jeremy’s almost sure it’s happened before as he tip-toes to peer in one of the large front windows, trying to see through the crack between two signs, hours of operation and a full-body depiction of some sort of man-bear thing with a top hat.

He swears he can hear something moving on the inside of the building, but it’s too dark to see anything except almost impossibly shiny entryway tile. He lets go of the window, slinking alongside the building, trying to find another window but he finds nothing, it’s hard to tell what it’s like in there. He scowls to himself. He stalks back to his car, vows to come back in the morning.

* * *

**05.**

It’s twilight, days later, when Jeremy finally does return to the pizzeria. The clouds are cradling the pink sunlight against the horizon in a thin strip the color of sheep’s wool. The crickets have taken to the night, but there are a few cars left in the parkinglot. He fidgets. Jeremy feels, somewhere, he’s broken a promise to the universe by coming here too late, but he refuses to believe it. He grimaces. There’s a mailbox on the corner that he leans against to have a cigarette. He taps his pack of lucky strike filters against it nervously.

The last few days have been hectic. Jeff’s been out of town and it’s been hard to feel okay about things when he doesn’t even vaguely know where his brother is. With handling his contacts, it’s been even harder to find time to do anything than usual when he’s just trying to turn a profit.

It’s been days since he’s had two minutes free to actually clear his head while smoking a cigarette. He enjoys it. He watches the sky turn pinker and pinker and then start to fade as the teal closes in over the sky, darkening to near-black. A straggling late family toddles out of the pizzeria with a couple young kids and an older one. They all look very tired. The younger are screaming and Jeremy can hear them from across the parkinglot while he watches their mother eye him with concern, subtly.

He looks away from them. He doesn’t want to look at her. Jeremy waits until they’ve pulled out of the lot to approach the building. He opens the door and comes face to face with the man in red-brown. He has his hand curled around a ring of keys more expansive than should be necessary for a building of this size, and he looks vaguely startled. Vaguely startled looks as good as any other expression on him, it seems. Jeremy frowns.

“Um, we’re clo—” The man in red’s expression falls from confusion to annoyance as Jeremy cuts him off.

“It’s Jeremy Fitzgerald,” he says, grinning, pointing to the scarring over his left eye. He’s tipped a hat down over it now, grown his hair out a little to cover the marks, but it’s visible no matter how much he tries to hide it and while the man is leaning in to examine his face he glances around the room entered into; it’s what he expected of Freddy Fazbear’s. Something about the way the shadows hang in the corner of the now half-lit room sends shivers down Jeremy’s spine and he can’t help but smile and feel jolts in his stomach over that.

“Oh, oh, Jeremy!” the man’s tone changes completely, turning into the friendly purr Jeremy is used to. He almost rolls his eyes. He knows a man who knows how to play his audience when he sees one.

“You’re here about the job?” the man asks, and Jeremy nods, suddenly more enthusiastic than he thought he’d be about working at a place for kids.

“It’s a night position, right? Not entertainment?”

“Worried about your face, Jeremy?” His expression is hard to read, still pleasant, but imploring, genuinely curious within the jest.

“No, I just don’t like kids,” he says it with as little attachment as possible; light and airy, it could be taken as a joke. The man’s eyes, a curious shade of blue Jeremy didn’t notice before, skim this expression and discard it, jump to where his hands are knotted firmly into the pockets of his jacket.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” he says after a long moment.

Jeremy doesn’t bother asking who, just follows as the man turns on his heel and leads him through a set of twists and turns that Jeremy won’t remember until he’s properly employed to a small office.

There’s a man pouring over security footage in a rolling chair at one side of the room. There’s a fan on the desk. The office seems to have seen better days, and little dusting.  It feels more empty than an office should feel. It feels dangerous, exposed, it’s strange that an office should feel this way and it delights Jeremy. He feels his veins sparkling like fireworks. There’s a stain on the floor the same shade of pink as dry blood. Could be coffee. Jeremy chooses to think it’s not.

The man at the surveillance screens is identifiable first by his thick glasses, he looks to be maybe half a decade older than the man in red, in his early to mid thirties. He has a mess of wavy brown hair cropped just above his chin, and he’s wearing an outfit two decades out of date. He doesn’t notice them approaching and the man in red sneaks up next to him, taps him on the shoulder.

“Mister Thomas,” he murmurs, just loud enough for Jeremy to hear, “I’ve brought you our next employee.”

“Mmhm,” Thomas hums, and Jeremy taps his foot. He tunes halfway out to examine the stain on the tile in better detail.

“Mister Thomas, this is Jeremy Fitzgerald, friend of mine,” the man in red’s mouth twists around the lie like it was formed to it, but then, it’s not that hard of a lie to make; they’ve known each other long enough some people might call them friends just by knowing each other.

The feed stops rolling on the screen and Thomas looks up at Jeremy. Jeremy looks back at him after taking a moment to notice he’s being watched. He scuffs his toe against the stain.

“Jeremy Fitzgerald,” Thomas mutters, then looks at Jeremy for half a second before he stops making eye contact, “You can call me Henry, or Thomas, and if Arthur’s found a friend in you I hope to god I will too. We need help more than ever right now.”

And just like that, Jeremy has an almost half-legitimate job.

 

 

 


End file.
